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> All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then? It remains a mess, but less of a mess? Look, it's all bad guys running the s

by ajross 3y ago

> All correct and yet, what should happen? Israel stops their campaign. And then? It remains a mess, but less of a mess? Look, it's all bad guys running the show in that hell hole of a desert. There are no trusted entities anywhere able to run a government that isn't somewhere between actively antagonistic and actively genocidal toward half the local population. Nonetheless a status quo with less shooting and death is better than a status quo with more. Hamas killed fewer people than Israel did/is, so... yeah, I guess. An occasional October 7th is a better choice than levelling Gaza is. Incrementally. But none of this is going to get better, likely within our lifetimes.

aurelien_gasser 3y ago
> Hamas killed fewer people than Israel did/is That's an understatement, Hamas killed less than 1,000 civilians, Israel killed 20,000+
- ajross 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    I think you are reading mmuch more into that reply than is warranted. It’s simple fact more people have now died due to Israel’s actions. That doesn’t mean they necessarily need to be punished for it. The international community doesn’t really need to. If this is anything like the other 10 times Israel did one of their “Let’s provision some extra terrorists” exercises, they’ve already guaranteed that they’ll deal with two or three more decades of the palestinian population hating their guts.
  - aurelien_gasser 3y ago
    Not picking a side or trying to punish anyone, I'm just highlighting that the difference in the number of victims is quite significant. It would be quite a different situation if Israel had killed only sightly more Palestinian civilians than Hamas' did in their attack. Actually, I suspect that this ICJ order would not have occurred, and that there wouldn't be such widespread accusations of genocide.
  - albedoa 3y ago
    I march with left-leaning American Jews. Exactly zero of them are called genocidal colonizers by anyone, let alone left-leaning American progressives. Since you are asserting the existence of something here, are you able to provide an example?
    - ajross 3y ago
      Replying here in a flagged subthread because I really do think this is important: So... those two accusations are so commonly made and debated that they both have their own wikipedia pages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_colonialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_colonialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusatio... I mean, sure, you can retreat to arguments about whether it's a personal accusation or just an abstract idea, or whether I can substantiate use of the combined pharse "genocidal colonizer" (which of course I can't). But we both know that's hairsplitting. The point I was trying to make is that there is a large population of people[1] out there who AGREE with you on virtually every practical, relevant point of public policy or international relations.... but who will never make common cause with you if they perceive your goals as the invalidation of the nationality of nine million people. There's no solution here that doesn't involve Zionists, just as there's no solution that rejects Islam.[2] [1] And in particular people with significant influence over the Israeli policy you want to see changed! [2] Realistically there's just no solution, and it would do well for everyone involved to recognize that and resign ourselves to the policy of just reducing immediate harm as what amounts to a BATNA.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        Both those accusations are colorable and have non-inflammatory interpretations. For example, sociologically speaking, Israel is a settler-colonialist state. What activists don't acknowledge is that the concept of "settler-colonialism" was invented to describe the distinction between extractive colonialism, of the King Leopold of Belgium type, and the long-term sustainable kind, of the New Zealand type. It was a way of working out why some human migration seems to "work" and others don't. Later --- I think probably in part due to the abuses of "settlers" within Israel, in the West Bank --- the term became an epithet. I suspect it's used largely by people who don't know the meaning. Similarly, there's a colloquial meaning to the word "genocide" that doesn't intersect with the legal meaning. It's any campaign of mass violence directed at a race or creed. That meaning is dilutive of the original concept of genocide, which really did mean an effort to erase (through murder, sterilization, or kidnapping) an entire ethnicity. But it has meaning nonetheless. However justified the military operation of Gaza might be, it would be difficult for a supporter of the IDF to argue that it doesn't consistute mass violence targeting Palestinians, even if it pretty clearly doesn't have either the intention or the potential to erase the Palestinian identity (I feel like if you asked an activist selected at random for a percentage of Palestinians killed in Gaza, you'd get a double-digit number from most of them, which of course not even close).
- gafferongames 3y ago
  Hamas directly and intentionally targeted civilians. Israel is doing what it can to limit civilian casualties while destroying Hamas. Hamas is making that very difficult by blending in with the population, putting command centers under major hospitals and so on.
  - Lord-Jobo 3y ago
    > Israel is doing what it can to limit civilian casualties while destroying Hamas. You should really read the parent article at the top of the page. It doesn't support this statement and the court ruling was created from a mountain of evidence.
    - Sabinus 3y ago
      How close does it come to intentionally targeting civilians?
      - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        They hunted down, shot, and killed multiple of their own, underwear-clad civilian citizens who were all the while waving white flags and loudly surrendering in hebrew [0] Imagine the sort of intentional targeting we don't get to see, because the journalists are killed [1] or the internet is cut [2] or the power is cut [3] or because everyone hiding is terrified to even move, knowing anything moving will be shot on sight [4], even surrendering Israeli hostages [0]. What a nightmare. Known (indeed, willing) indiscriminate killing of civilians (especially in civilian areas, yikes) is as much a war crime [5] as "intentionally targeting civilians", even if one shouts "get out of there!" or "human shields!" or "terrorists!" or "it's comin' right for us!" in a Calvinball-style declaration whilst doing it. For more detailed analysis of how Israel seems to be ignoring their obligation to protect Palestinian civilians, I recommend consulting the full ruling [6] from the ICJ, the literal judges of this matter. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-rules-of-engagement-hostages.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/world/middleeast/israel-h... 1: https://cpj.org/2024/01/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/ https://cpj.org/2024/01/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-... 2: https://www.wired.com/story/israel-gaza-internet-blackouts-weapon/ https://www.wired.com/story/israel-gaza-internet-blackouts-w... 3: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-middle-east-67073970 https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-middle-east-67073970 4: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/16/middleeast/idf-sniper-gaza-church-deaths-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/16/middleeast/idf-sniper-gaza-ch... 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiscriminate_attack#The_1977_Additional_Protocols_to_the_Geneva_Conventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiscriminate_attack#The_1977... 6 (PDF warning): https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...
- weatherlite 3y ago
  All Palestinians deaths are civilians by your measures.
weatherlite 3y ago
> An occasional October 7th is a better choice than levelling Gaza is Better for who? For Hamas yes, killing Israelis with impunity would be a boost. But for Israel - I don't know of any democracy that can keep going with an 'occasional' October 7th. A country can't sustain that without collapsing at some point. Think about 9-11 but with 80k killed instead of 3000, and around 10000 kidnapped. And the entity responsible is just around the corner and gonna keep doing it on occasion. Those are the proportions. How many of these would the U.S be able to endure before its economy and society collapsed?
- ajross 3y ago
  Then we'll deal with that "at some point" I guess? Again, Israel is a bad guy too. It's all bad guys. All options suck. So pick the one with less death and just shuffle along until some unknown event in the far future acts to break the stalemate and produce a peaceful region (or, more realistically, acts to break the equilibrium and we get a genuine demographic disaster that returns the area to a "single ethnicity" state, which sucks even more, but may be unavoidable). Tough love: Israel can't expect to continue to act as it has in the decades since the fall of the PA. It ultimately depends on international support and that support will eventually run out, c.f. the linked article. It won't happen soon, or all at once, but it will happen and there needs to be a plan for regional coexistence, and as you'd surely agree there really isn't one beyond an imagined (and largely impossible) total military victory.

by ajross 3y ago

aurelien_gasser 3y ago

> Hamas killed fewer people than Israel did/is That's an understatement, Hamas killed less than 1,000 civilians, Israel killed 20,000+

ajross 3y ago
[flagged]
- Aeolun 3y ago
  I think you are reading mmuch more into that reply than is warranted. It’s simple fact more people have now died due to Israel’s actions. That doesn’t mean they necessarily need to be punished for it. The international community doesn’t really need to. If this is anything like the other 10 times Israel did one of their “Let’s provision some extra terrorists” exercises, they’ve already guaranteed that they’ll deal with two or three more decades of the palestinian population hating their guts.
- aurelien_gasser 3y ago
  Not picking a side or trying to punish anyone, I'm just highlighting that the difference in the number of victims is quite significant. It would be quite a different situation if Israel had killed only sightly more Palestinian civilians than Hamas' did in their attack. Actually, I suspect that this ICJ order would not have occurred, and that there wouldn't be such widespread accusations of genocide.
- albedoa 3y ago
  I march with left-leaning American Jews. Exactly zero of them are called genocidal colonizers by anyone, let alone left-leaning American progressives. Since you are asserting the existence of something here, are you able to provide an example?
  - ajross 3y ago
    Replying here in a flagged subthread because I really do think this is important: So... those two accusations are so commonly made and debated that they both have their own wikipedia pages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_colonialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism_as_settler_colonialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusatio... I mean, sure, you can retreat to arguments about whether it's a personal accusation or just an abstract idea, or whether I can substantiate use of the combined pharse "genocidal colonizer" (which of course I can't). But we both know that's hairsplitting. The point I was trying to make is that there is a large population of people[1] out there who AGREE with you on virtually every practical, relevant point of public policy or international relations.... but who will never make common cause with you if they perceive your goals as the invalidation of the nationality of nine million people. There's no solution here that doesn't involve Zionists, just as there's no solution that rejects Islam.[2] [1] And in particular people with significant influence over the Israeli policy you want to see changed! [2] Realistically there's just no solution, and it would do well for everyone involved to recognize that and resign ourselves to the policy of just reducing immediate harm as what amounts to a BATNA.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      Both those accusations are colorable and have non-inflammatory interpretations. For example, sociologically speaking, Israel is a settler-colonialist state. What activists don't acknowledge is that the concept of "settler-colonialism" was invented to describe the distinction between extractive colonialism, of the King Leopold of Belgium type, and the long-term sustainable kind, of the New Zealand type. It was a way of working out why some human migration seems to "work" and others don't. Later --- I think probably in part due to the abuses of "settlers" within Israel, in the West Bank --- the term became an epithet. I suspect it's used largely by people who don't know the meaning. Similarly, there's a colloquial meaning to the word "genocide" that doesn't intersect with the legal meaning. It's any campaign of mass violence directed at a race or creed. That meaning is dilutive of the original concept of genocide, which really did mean an effort to erase (through murder, sterilization, or kidnapping) an entire ethnicity. But it has meaning nonetheless. However justified the military operation of Gaza might be, it would be difficult for a supporter of the IDF to argue that it doesn't consistute mass violence targeting Palestinians, even if it pretty clearly doesn't have either the intention or the potential to erase the Palestinian identity (I feel like if you asked an activist selected at random for a percentage of Palestinians killed in Gaza, you'd get a double-digit number from most of them, which of course not even close).
gafferongames 3y ago
Hamas directly and intentionally targeted civilians. Israel is doing what it can to limit civilian casualties while destroying Hamas. Hamas is making that very difficult by blending in with the population, putting command centers under major hospitals and so on.
- Lord-Jobo 3y ago
  > Israel is doing what it can to limit civilian casualties while destroying Hamas. You should really read the parent article at the top of the page. It doesn't support this statement and the court ruling was created from a mountain of evidence.
  - Sabinus 3y ago
    How close does it come to intentionally targeting civilians?
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      They hunted down, shot, and killed multiple of their own, underwear-clad civilian citizens who were all the while waving white flags and loudly surrendering in hebrew [0] Imagine the sort of intentional targeting we don't get to see, because the journalists are killed [1] or the internet is cut [2] or the power is cut [3] or because everyone hiding is terrified to even move, knowing anything moving will be shot on sight [4], even surrendering Israeli hostages [0]. What a nightmare. Known (indeed, willing) indiscriminate killing of civilians (especially in civilian areas, yikes) is as much a war crime [5] as "intentionally targeting civilians", even if one shouts "get out of there!" or "human shields!" or "terrorists!" or "it's comin' right for us!" in a Calvinball-style declaration whilst doing it. For more detailed analysis of how Israel seems to be ignoring their obligation to protect Palestinian civilians, I recommend consulting the full ruling [6] from the ICJ, the literal judges of this matter. 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-rules-of-engagement-hostages.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/world/middleeast/israel-h... 1: https://cpj.org/2024/01/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/ https://cpj.org/2024/01/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-... 2: https://www.wired.com/story/israel-gaza-internet-blackouts-weapon/ https://www.wired.com/story/israel-gaza-internet-blackouts-w... 3: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-middle-east-67073970 https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-middle-east-67073970 4: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/16/middleeast/idf-sniper-gaza-church-deaths-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/16/middleeast/idf-sniper-gaza-ch... 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiscriminate_attack#The_1977_Additional_Protocols_to_the_Geneva_Conventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiscriminate_attack#The_1977... 6 (PDF warning): https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...
weatherlite 3y ago
All Palestinians deaths are civilians by your measures.

weatherlite 3y ago

> An occasional October 7th is a better choice than levelling Gaza is Better for who? For Hamas yes, killing Israelis with impunity would be a boost. But for Israel - I don't know of any democracy that can keep going with an 'occasional' October 7th. A country can't sustain that without collapsing at some point. Think about 9-11 but with 80k killed instead of 3000, and around 10000 kidnapped. And the entity responsible is just around the corner and gonna keep doing it on occasion. Those are the proportions. How many of these would the U.S be able to endure before its economy and society collapsed?

ajross 3y ago
Then we'll deal with that "at some point" I guess? Again, Israel is a bad guy too. It's all bad guys. All options suck. So pick the one with less death and just shuffle along until some unknown event in the far future acts to break the stalemate and produce a peaceful region (or, more realistically, acts to break the equilibrium and we get a genuine demographic disaster that returns the area to a "single ethnicity" state, which sucks even more, but may be unavoidable). Tough love: Israel can't expect to continue to act as it has in the decades since the fall of the PA. It ultimately depends on international support and that support will eventually run out, c.f. the linked article. It won't happen soon, or all at once, but it will happen and there needs to be a plan for regional coexistence, and as you'd surely agree there really isn't one beyond an imagined (and largely impossible) total military victory.